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Anyone have any thoughts on this message from Jim Goodwin? Mike Kipling From: Jim Goodwin <[log in to unmask]> Sent: 15 February 2019 05:48 To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Pumpkins? In 1100 AD in England?? I don't know where to send this, so I hope you do, and can forward it appropriately. Thanks. In "The Knights of Joyous Venture", about 3/4 through, Kipling writes, "... we broke into a broad, brown river by a hut in a clearing among fields of pumpkins." Pumpkins are a kind of squash, and the squashes generally are new-world plants (right?). So this jarred. However, etymologically, there seems to be some kind of justification. A superficial googling yields: 1640s, alteration of pompone, pumpion "melon, pumpkin" (1540s), from Middle French pompon, from Latin peponem (nominative pepo), from... So a Norman of the period might have used "pompon" and meant melon. I wonder what Kipling was thinking, and what he expected his readers to understand by "pumpkin". Would Englishmen of Kipling's time even have used the word for European melons? A possible note for the Readers Guide, which by the way I love. /jwg ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the RUDYARD-KIPLING list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=RUDYARD-KIPLING&A=1